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EDMONTON - For quite a long time, I’ve been saying that doughnuts are the new cupcakes. Wait, maybe I said that pie was the new cupcake. (Oddly, cupcakes seem to be showing remarkable resilience, avoiding an ouster of any description.) Still and all, I’ve been nosing about, sourcing good doughnuts from places you might not expect, in preparation for the day when I can no longer walk out my front door, and directly into a cupcake store.

This is a vegetarian and vegan restaurant, owned by sisters Tessa and Ashley Lee (who also own a gourmet pet food store beside The Clever Rabbit). The duo has developed a dairy-free doughnut and every day produces a small selection of flavours. The day I arrived, a simple, satisfying cinnamon doughnut, lightly sprinkled with sugar was available, as well as a vanilla flavour, topped with chocolate icing. They are small, dense and chewy, not unlike a carnival mini-doughnut. I’m not a vegan, so ordinarily wouldn’t partake in fare prepared without animal products. But it is a good treat, especially for those with limited options. Make sure to get there in the morning before stock disappears. $1.50 each.

This tiny, faded store, which looks more like a movie set than anything we’re used to seeing in the Tim Hortons-dominated landscape, has been in the south side community for some 40 years. Proprietor Lucy Lu puts out a small selection of standards daily, from a raspberry bismarck to a plain glazed. Lu, a chemist by training, bought the shop several years ago and has tinkered with the recipes to try to make them less sweet. It seems to be working. The doughnuts are delicious, without leaving a guilty lump in the belly. $0.75 each

For years, this shop was occupied by Country Style, but owner Leon Papavasiliou took it over in 2000. Everything is made from scratch, on-site, including tea biscuits, croissants and a selection of soups and sandwiches. I had a raised chocolate doughnut, fresh as a newly washed blankie. Its chocolate icing was still soft, with no cracks, and the soft flesh of the doughnut was pale yellow, with a slightly yeasty flavour. It tasted like the 1970s, on the days when my mom did her big grocery shop, and didn’t have time to make dessert for dinner, and so she would bring home fresh doughnuts for the kids. Radio music drifted like soft snow from above; patrons read paperbacks, a few people chatted in a desultory fashion. I nibbled my doughnut, and thought about naps. $1 each.

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